Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851», sayfa 21

THE FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND CALEB ELLISON

CHAPTER THE FIRST

The Reverend Caleb Ellison had an odd way of doing every thing; but he was so good a man, and so adored a clergyman, that his being in love was an interesting circumstance to a large proportion of the inhabitants of the country town in which he lived. When he looked up at the chimney-pots as he walked the streets, or went slowly skipping along the foot-pavement to the Reading-room in the market-place, the elders of his congregation might wish that he would walk more like other men, and the children giggled at the sight; but the ladies, young and old, regarded these things as a part of the "originality" which they admired in him; and Joanna Carey would scarcely admit to herself that such freaks required forbearance.

On Friday evening Mr. Carey returned before the rest of his party from a strawberry feast, to tell his wife that their dear girl had shown him by a look, that she must now decide on her lot for life. Ellison had certainly spoken. Joanna must decide for herself. If she was satisfied to have the greatest blessings that a woman could have – high moral and spiritual excellence in a man who loved her – and could, for these, make light of the daily drawbacks of his oddities, it was not for any one else to object. Mr. Carey could not say that his own temper would bear with so eccentric a companion; but perhaps he was narrow: perhaps his wife's nice household ways for twenty-five years had spoiled him. Joanna knew what she was undertaking. She knew that it was as much as the clerk and the deacons could do, to get the pastor into the pulpit in proper time every Sunday, and that this would be her business now. She knew that he seldom remembered to shave, and how he had burned his marble chimney-piece black; and – Well; perhaps these were trifles. Perhaps it was a fault not to regard them as such. If a father was fortunate enough to have a man of eminent single-mindedness for his son-in-law, and genius to boot, he ought not, perhaps, to require common sense also; but it had always been Mr. Carey's belief that good sense was the greatest part of genius.

By Sunday evening Mr. Carey was little disposed to desire any thing more in his intended son-in-law than had appeared that day. Joanna had engaged herself to him on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning there was something in the tone of his pathetic voice so unusual, in the very first verses of the Psalm, that many hearers looked up; and then they saw something very unusual in his countenance. He so preached, that a stranger inquired earnestly who this Mr. Ellison was, and whence he came; and his admirers in the congregation said he was inspired.

"Joanna behaved very well, did not she?" whispered Mrs. Carey to her husband, as they were returning from chapel.

"Very well, indeed. And it was extremely fine, his preaching to-day. Extremely fine!"

And this particular day, the father feared as little for Joanna as Joanna for herself.

There was no reason for delay about the marriage. Mr. Ellison had three hundred pounds a year from his office, and was never likely to have any more. The interest of Joanna's portion – one thousand pounds – was hers whenever she married. She was four-and-twenty, and Mr. Ellison was five years older. They were no children; there was no reason for delay; so every body knew of the engagement immediately, and the preparations went on diligently.

A pastor's marriage is always a season of great interest and amusement. In this case it was unusually diverting from the singular innocence of the gentleman about all household affairs. He showed all the solicitude of which he was capable to have every thing right and comfortable for Joanna; but his ideas were so extraordinary, that his friends suspected that he had been quizzed by certain youths of his congregation, who had indeed made solemn suggestions to him about dredging-boxes and rolling-pins, and spigots, and ball-irons, and other conveniences, the names of which were strange to him. He had promised to leave the whole concern of furnishing in the hands of a discreet lady and her daughters, with a power of appeal to Mrs. Carey in doubtful cases; but when these mysterious names had been lying on his mind for some days, he could not help making inquiries and suggestions, which brought nothing but laughter upon him. Mr. and Mrs. Carey thought the quizzing went rather too far; but Joanna did not seem to mind it.

"His head should not be stuffed with nonsense," observed Mr. Carey to his wife, "when business that he really ought to be attending to is left undone."

"You mean the Life Insurance," replied she. "Why do you not remind him of it?"

"I believe I must. But it is not a pleasant thing to do. No man in his circumstances ought to need to be spoken to more than once. However, I have to suggest to him to insure all this pretty furniture that his friends are giving him; and while I am speaking about the Fire Insurance, I can easily mention the more important one."

"I should feel no difficulty," observed Mrs. Carey. "He will be purely thankful to you for telling him what he ought to do."

An opportunity soon occurred. The presents came in fast: the Careys were consulted about how to stow them all. One evening at supper, the conversation naturally turned – as it probably does in every house – on what should be saved first in case of fire. Mr. Carey asked Mr. Ellison whether his landlord had not insured the cottage, and whether he himself was not thinking of insuring the furniture from fire.

Instant opposition arose from Mr. Carey's second daughter, Charlotte, who declared that she could not bear to think of such a thing. She begged that nobody would speak of such a thing. Indeed, she wondered that any body could. When induced to explain the emotions with which her mind was laboring, she declared her horror that any one belonging to her could feel that any money could compensate for the loss of the precious things, such as old letters, and fond memorials, which perish in a fire.

"How old are you, my dear?" inquired her father.

"Sixteen, papa."

"Indeed! I should have taken you to be six years younger. I should wonder at a child of ten talking so sillily as you are doing."

Mr. Ellison stared; for his sympathy with Charlotte's sentiment was so strong, that he was looking at her with beaming eyes, and softly ejaculating, "Dear Charlotte! dear child!"

It took some time to convince both (for young ladies of sixteen sometimes see things less clearly than six years before and ten years after that age) that, if precious papers and gifts are unhappily lost in a fire, that is no reason why tables and chairs, and fish-kettles and dredging-boxes, and carpets and house linen should not be paid for by an Insurance Office; but at last both young lady and pastor saw this. Still, Charlotte did not look satisfied; and her father invited her to utter what was in her mind. After some fencing about whether her thoughts were silly, and whether it would be silly to speak them, out came the scruple. Was there not something worldly in thinking so much about money and the future?

"Dear Charlotte! dear child!" again soliloquized Mr. Ellison.

Mr. Carey did not think the apprehension silly; but, in his opinion, the danger of worldliness lay the other way. He thought the worldliness lay in a man's spending all his income, leaving wife and children to be maintained by their neighbors, in case of accidents which may happen any day to any body, and which do happen to a certain proportion of people, within an assigned time, as regularly as death happens to all. Charlotte had nothing to say against life insurance, because every man knows that he shall die; and there is no speculation in the case. But she was extremely surprised to hear that there is an equal certainty, though of a narrower extent, about fire, and other accidents; that it is a fact that, out of so many householders, such and such a number will have their houses burned down.

"Is it indeed so?" asked Joanna.

"It is indeed so. Moreover, out of so much property, such and such an amount will perish by fire. Every householder being bound in with this state of things for his share of the risk, he owes it equally to others and to himself to secure the compensation, in case of accident. Does he not?"

"How to others?"

"Because he should contribute his share to the subscription, if you like to call it so, by which the sufferer from fire, whoever he be, is to be compensated. Thus, you see, Charlotte, that which seems to you an act of worldliness is a neighborly act, as well as a prudent one."

When reminded, Charlotte admitted that she had herself said so about the Cow Club at B – . She had told many people how the cottagers at B – , were now saved from all danger of ruin by the loss of a cow – a loss fatal to so many cottagers elsewhere. The farmers at B – , who could ill afford to lose from nine pounds to fifteen pounds at a stroke by the death of a cow, had joined with the cottagers in setting up a Cow Life-insurance. The club employed a skillful cow-doctor. The members paid in a small portion of the weekly profits of their milk-selling; and had the comfort of knowing that, whenever their cow died, they would be supplied with another, or with a part of the value of one, according to the length of time, or the yearly amount they had paid. Charlotte admitted that she had been delighted with the scheme, but now asserted that she was much more pleased about the Quakers and their ship.

"Ha! Quakers?" said Mr. Ellison.

Yes; those Quakers, now, were the sort of people whom Charlotte admired. So unworldly! so trusting! There was a rich India ship, belonging to some Quakers, lately wrecked in the Channel, very near her port. The whole cargo was lost. It had been a total loss to the owners, because their principles would not allow them to insure – to put themselves out of the hands of Providence, and speculate in "the stormy winds fulfilling his word." That had been their statement; and was there not something very beautiful in it? Charlotte looked at her father for an answer.

"Tell me, first, my dear," he replied, "whether you admire Tasker, the shoemaker, for refusing to have his children vaccinated, saying that it was taking them out of the hands of the Lord?"

Charlotte could not think of poor little Mary Tasker, disfigured and half blind, and not wish that she had been vaccinated; and yet Tasker had acted in a resigned spirit.

"Well: exactly as much as you admire Tasker, I admire your Quakers. I honor their motive, but I am sorry for their mistake – sorry that they refuse one safeguard against worldliness."

"Worldliness, papa!"

Mr. Carey explained how the moral dangers of commercial pursuits are in proportion to their gambling character. Large gains and great hazards must be more engrossing to the mind, and more stimulating to the passions than small and secure profits. The great drawback upon commerce with very remote countries is, or was, its gambling character, from the variety and seriousness of the risks, and the largeness of the profits laid on to cover them. By means of insurance against sea risks and other dangers, the losses are spread over so large a number that they cease to be losses, and become a mere tax, such as men may willingly pay for security. When a man has so introduced moderation into his gains and his losses, as to detach himself from "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches," he may listen with a quiet pulse (as far as his own affairs are concerned) to the wind roaring over the sea, and need not be "afraid of evil tidings." It was quite a new view to Charlotte that her Quakers had been gambling, in fact, when they should have been trading safely; but she could not deny that it was so. Nobody wished her to give them up, in regard to their spirit of faith and trust; but nobody could stand up for their prudence.

The most striking view to Charlotte was that there is nothing accidental in storms and tempests; and that it is only our ignorance which makes us call them so. The realm of Meteorology is, no doubt, governed by laws as invariable as that of Astronomy. We know this fact, though we, as yet, know little of these laws. Something more we know: and that is, the average of shipwrecks and conflagrations, in a certain condition of society; in the same way that we know the average of men that will die, out of a certain number, in a certain time: and it is this knowledge of the averages which justifies the resource of insurance in all the three cases. When Mr. Ellison at length comprehended that there were thousands of prudent men now paying their mite to compensate him for the loss of his new furniture, in case of its being burned, on the simple condition of his paying his mite also, he was so struck by their neighborly conduct, that he could scarcely express his sense of it. The ladies considered it impossible that he should feel so strongly, and be heedless about the condition on his own part. Mr. Carey shook his head.

Mr. Carey was right. The wedding-day came, and the insurance was not effected. – Joanna did not like to tease her betrothed about worldly affairs. If the subject was mentioned, and the train of thought revived, he went into an enthusiasm about the benevolent class of insurers: but he did not become one himself.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

The wedding-day came and went. The young people were married and gone. Mr. Ellison's flock were assembled, almost entire, in the parish church, for the first and last time. In those days, dissenters could not marry in their own chapels, or any where but in church; and the present was an occasion when the clergyman of the parish appeared to great advantage, with his kind courtesy toward his dissenting neighbors. The whole affair was talked over from day to day, during the wedding-trip of the Ellisons, in the intervals of Charlotte's business in preparing their house for their return. Then began her sisterly relation toward the pastor beloved by so many. Her reverence for him, and her pride on Joanna's account, made her consider his dignity (in spite of himself) on all occasions; from the receiving him at his own door, on the evening of arrival, to the defending him in every trifle in which he vexed her orderly father. When Mr. Carey complained of his being found at breakfast unshaven, and wondered how he would like to see Joanna come down with her hair in papers, Charlotte contended that these things mattered less in a gentleman than a lady; and that it was from a meditative turn that he forgot to shave, even as Newton forgot to dine. If he fell over all his new furniture in turn, she declared it was because the affection of his friends had over-crowded his cottage with memorials of their love. If he was met half-way to the town without his hat, she looked with reverence in his face for a foretaste of his next Sunday's sermon. When it came out that Joanna had paid all the post boys and bills on the journey; that Joanna had to go with him to the tailor's, when he was to be measured for a new coat; that Joanna had to carve, because he did not know the wing of a fowl from the leg – But we will not dwell further on the foibles of a good man whose virtues were as uncommon in their degree, as his weaknesses, it may be hoped, in kind.

Full as the cottage was of pretty things, it was destined to be yet fuller in another year. Never was there a prettier little wardrobe of tiny caps and robes, and the like, than room must be found for, the next autumn, in preparation for that prettiest of all things – a baby. Half the ladies in the congregation brought their offerings of delicate work, in cambric and the softest of flannel, and most fantastical of pincushions and baskets. It was a delightful season to the whole family; and Joanna was so well and bright! And when the great day was over, there were such rallyings of Mr. and Mrs. Carey, on their being so early a grand-papa and grand-mamma; and it was so droll to see Mr. Ellison, who seemed never to have seen a baby, but in baptizing the little creatures, whom he had always hitherto regarded as young Christians, and never as little infants! Mr. Carey was rather ashamed of the extent of his ignorance, shown on the first sight of his child in its sleep, by its mother's side.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "a baby!" in as much surprise as if it had been the last thing he expected to see.

"Yes; there is your baby. How do you like her?"

He gazed in silence, and at length said – "But can she walk?"

"My dear Ellison! at a day old!"

"But can she talk?"

"All in good time. You will have enough of that by-and by."

"Dear, dear! Ha!" said he, again and again, till he was sent off to dinner, at a friend's house.

He dined at some friend's house every day. On the fourth day it was at a distance of three miles. Mrs. Carey had gone home, in the twilight of a November day. As soon as she was gone, the nurse stepped out, very improperly, for something that she wanted, the child being asleep beside Joanna. She desired the servant girl to carry up her mistress's gruel in a quarter-of-an-hour, if she was not back. The girl did so; and approached the bed, with the basin in one hand and a candle in the other. She poked the candle directly against the dimity curtains, and set the bed on fire. It was a large bed, in a small crowded room, close to two walls and near the window-curtain. The flame caught the tester instantly, and then the corner of the pillow, and the edge of the sheet. Before that, the girl had thrown down the basin of hot gruel on the baby, rushed to the window, thrown up the sash, and screamed; and she next rushed out at the door, leaving it wide open, and then at the house-door, leaving that wide open too. The air streamed up the staircase, and the bed was on fire all round.

Poor Joanna crept off the bed, and took the child in one arm, while with the other she tried to pull off a blanket. She was found weakly tugging at it. He who so found her was a sailor, who had seen the light from the road, and run up the stairs.

"I see how it is, madam," said he, in a cheerful voice. "Don't be alarmed; you are very safe. Come in here." And he carried her into the next room – the little drawing-room – and laid her, with her baby on her arm, on the sofa. He summoned a comrade, who was in the road. They pulled up the drugget from the floor, doubled it again, laid it over her, and tucked it nicely in, as if there was no hurry.

"Now, madam," said he, "where shall we carry you?" She was carried through damp and dusk to her father's house. Her mother was not there. Such news spreads, nobody knows how. Her mother was then in the streets without her bonnet, imploring every body she met to save her child. She presently encountered one of the sailors, returning to the fire. He assured her the lady and child were safe, and sent her home. Mr. Carey was almost as much beside himself. His first idea was, that it was Mr. Ellison who had, by some awkwardness, set his house on fire; and he said so, very publicly; and very sorry he was for it afterward.

Mr. Ellison was called from the dinner-table, and told he was wanted at home. He strode along, in a bewildered state, till he saw the flames from a distance. As he stood before the cottage, which was now one blaze, nobody could tell him where his wife was. He was trying to break from many hands, and enter the house, when some one at last came up with the news of the safety of his wife and babe. As for the servant, it was some days before she was heard of; and there were serious apprehensions about her, when her aunt came in from the country, to say that the poor creature had fled to her, and would never come near the town, or see any of the family again. Nobody wondered that she said she should never be happy again.

Joanna seemed to be really no worse for the adventure; and for some days it was confidently believed that the infant would do well, though it was severely scalded. Every thing was lost – every article of clothing of all three, all the pretty gifts, all the furniture, two precious portraits, all Mr. Ellison's books and manuscripts. But he was so happy and thankful that his chief treasures were saved, that he never preached more nobly than on the next Sunday, without a scrap of notes; – he who took such pains with his sermons, and never preached extempore! It was from the abundance of his heart that he spoke.

"I have to beg your pardon, Ellison," said Mr. Carey, "for what I said in the first moments of misery."

"It was natural – it was not doing me wrong; for my mother used to say that I did awkward things sometimes; that I was not expert; and it appears to me that I really have erred." And the good man went on to blame himself for having no furniture and clothes to give Joanna, no piano, no books! His landlord was no loser by the fire, while he was destitute. In short, Mr. Ellison was full of remorse for not having insured. All the ladies of his acquaintance were stitching away in his and his wife's behalf; but this was rather an aggravation than a comfort; and he fully intended to effect an insurance, both against fire (when he should again be settled) and on his life. Still, Mr. Carey told his wife, with a shake of the head, that his impression was that it would never be done.

All such thoughts were presently banished. The baby did not get through. After pining for ten days, she died. Then it was that the pastor's fine qualities manifested themselves. He surrendered so patiently a happiness and hope which had really become very dear to his heart; he supported Joanna so tenderly; he considered the whole family so much more than himself, that Mr. Carey vowed he would never more be vexed or ashamed at the peculiarities of such a man.